by Malcolm Knox
Nobody can take off behind there.
Sweep’s too strong.
Take-off’s too vertical.
Too sucky.
He always wipes out in there.
Gunna kill himself.
How they justified themselves.
Dennis kept going in, paddled against the sweep to hold his position, the only one strong enough to turn and paddle into the waves against the sweep, but when it sucked up and went big and vertical he couldn’t get the old board shape, the seven-eleven with the big raked fin, couldn’t get it to hook hard enough, so he come down too face-on and wipe out where it sucked up behind the black granite.
And they all thought he was mad.
And they all thought they were right sitting where they were.
But you didn’t mind wiping out: the fingers of white pulling you down and roughing you up. Only water. Didn’t hurt. Gave you a tickle in fact, made you giggle. Your body’s ninety percent sea anyway. You and the sea, you were just finding each other.
Water, meet water.
Wiping out you also learnt your learning:
The secret to surfing:
You hesitate for a micro-micro-second, you’re gone.
You got to commit. Throw the kitchen sink at it. You got to be in a frenzy. Kill that wave. You got to surf angry, like your life depends on it.
A frenzy of anger.
Got to be in that state:
Fury.
Every wave:
Fury.
The BFO come back from her ‘surfing’ trip. She looks pumped in the shoulders. I ask her has she been in the ladies’ gym. She blanks me and sits down with her notebook and asks me about my mates from old days. She’s Miss Nancy Drew again, on her cold case. Reckons she’s the one kid in this whole golden coast who knows the truth about what I’m meant to have done.
‘Didn’t really have mates.’
‘You musta had mates. Glenn Tinkler, Frank Johnson, Michael Peterson?’
‘They weren’t mates. They were surfers.’
‘A surfer couldn’t be a mate?’
‘Not if he was in the water.’
‘Not even if he was your brother?’
Give her a long look, chill her to the bone. Check if your aviators are still there.
‘Least of all if he was my brother.’
‘You don’t believe you had any friends among the surfing community?’
‘Contradiction, girl. Surfing community. If they were surfing, they were trying to steal my waves. Waste them.’
‘Your waves.’ The BFO can’t hold down that smirk. It gets out and runs round her face like a puppy being took for a walk.
‘They were all my waves. That’s where I lived.’
She writes in her notepad. You won’t try to sneak a look. Wouldn’t want to give her the pleasure.
‘So . . . outside surfing? You had your mates from outside the surfing community?’
‘What’s “outside the surfing community”?’
‘Non-surfers?’
‘Can’t say I ever had time for anyone who didn’t surf. Cept birds.’
‘You liked . . . girls if they didn’t surf?’
‘Nope.’
I shoot her a look. She must see herself reflected in my aviators. I give them a push back up my nose. Still there.
‘I liked birds because they didn’t surf.’
Flat flat flaaaaaat.
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He hadn’t been into surfing long enough to know what a flat spell meant.
The depression.
The pain.
The boredom.
----------------------------------------
The Gold Coast was a village of bored teenage boys at the best of times.
When it was flat it was murder.
Spring of his eighteenth year, 1968, the warmest, balmiest, summeriest on record.
Flattest.
The depression.
The pain.
The boredom.
He got up every day and his heart sank: big sheet of plastic stretched to the horizon. Mums and bubs splashing in Rainbow Bay.
Had to go to school. Eyes met Mr Paterson’s: a shake of the head. The headmaster’s eyes as dead flat as the Pacific. Depressed, bored. Mr Paterson had taught him how to read the weather charts he got faxed in from the bureau. And for what? For what? All they showed was big monster highs plonked like dead dinosaurs on the sea, squashing it.
Had to go to church. Stubbed his toe. Father A’s Masses went the full duration, Latin and all. Prayers for some action: Dear Gawd, just some two-foot wind swell would do. Not asking for much, not even ground swell, just something rideable.
Dennis turned to religion. The flat spell went on. So he lost his faith.
Worst part of the Big Flat was when you were on land you had to socialise. Rod held parties at the QUEENSLANDER. The downstairs rat cellar become the disco for all the bored kids from the neighbourhood. All the groms was there every night, drinking and playing crud music. They played it real loud and you tell Rod to shut them up.
Who’s gunna complain? Rod said, all cheek. We’ve only got dead ’uns for neighbours and I don’t think they’re gunna be calling the Black Maria.
Before long there be kids, boys and girls, sneak off at night to do their bits and pieces among the tombstones. They got off on it, everyone knew that. They come back with a zombied-out look. Or just pass out on the graves.
Who’s gunna complain?
Unlike you Rod loved a drink and when he was with his mates and he run out of money he’d do dares for a drink, like eat a raw snail, shell and all, or run starkers through the shopping centre, and wasn’t really about how thirsty he was but what a mug lair and a show pony he was for his mates.
Meanwhile: you run your own race.
Rod wanted you to have more mates, like he had, but you didn’t need friends, friends wasted waves, friends dropped in on you.
And friends couldn’t bring some waves in, couldn’t break the Big Flat, could they.
Let them think you’re weird.
Doesn’t matter eh.
The depression.
The pain.
The toes stubbed purple.
The boredom.
•
Big Flat during school hols that spring. Dennis grinding his teeth all night. Took it all out on his bro, had him washing up, scrubbing the toilets, sweeping the floors, bringing the clothes off the line, hanging them up, mowing the lawn . . .
Mo close the door behind her going out to work and Roddy’s eyes go to Dennis, who’s up with a snarl on his face and a list of chores.
Here we go, Rod went.
Rod’s problem was, Rod was disobedient. When Mo went out and you took over, Rod wouldn’t listen to orders. Must of been Vietnam, the protest movement putting ideas in his head. The Prime Minister going missing in the surf down in Vicco. Roddy getting ideas about himself.
You told Rod do the washing-up.
Rod said no.
You told him how many times.
Rod said no.
You said, How many times am I gunna have to tell you?
Rod said, Nick off. Walked off down the hallway.
You picked something up and chucked it.
Wooden coathanger.
Clocked him back of the head. He saw it on the floor and thought you’d chucked a boomerang.
Didn’t come back ta ya, he said.
So you went him. Chasing him round the house and collared him and crow-pecked the top of his head.
You give him Chinese burns.
You give him nipple cripples.
You give him Russian braces.
You give him the sleeper hold.
I still ain’t doing the washing up ya dickhead!
You grabbed him and poleaxed him through the kitchen wall.
Mrs Dolethorpe, the next-door neighbour, was hanging out her washing when she looked up from her yard through the rubber trees and went: G’day Rodney.
Rod was half out the wall of your house like the figurehead on a boat.
G’day Mrs Dolethorpe.
When’s your mum get home?
Couple of hours I reckon?
Yous’ve got a bit of work to do then, don’t yous?
Spot on, Mrs D.
If Mo come home on time she’d impale you on a fricken gravestone. You pulled Roddy out the wall. You taped a Nat Young poster over the hole on the inside and hoped like hell Mo wouldn’t see the outside.
At the end of it, brothers again, job done.
Rod: Still ain’t doing the washing-up. I cooked, you can wash up.
It was true, Rod had cooked. He’d cooked with the big saucepan. Fried eggs and potatoes. You picked up the saucepan to acknowledge his effort.
You smacked him with it on the head. Blood dripping in the sink. On the dishes.
You better wash up that blood too, Rodney.
When you called him Rodney he knew you were serious. Just like if him or Mo called you Dennis. He was in a daze, spinning round like he been nailed by a six-foot close-out set. His hand on his forehead where you touched him. He lifted it and had a big grey mouse above his eye.
Must of knocked some sense into him. No more fighting. He washed up.
After Mo get home and went to bed, you and Rod patched up the outside wall with bits of old board offcuts. She knew but she didn’t say nothing. Her sharp blind eye. You and Rod done that together. Next day yous had a good surf.
Rod escaped to The Pit, where you wouldn’t go when it was crowded. The Pit got renovated during the Big Flat. Bored groms drug down old couches and foot stools, standing lamps, even a TV and a phone, so it was just like a living room. Not that there was any electricity for the TV and phone and lamps, but that wasn’t the point. The Pit was the clubhouse. Rod was right into the building program. Rod helped bring in a ‘borrowed’ nest of tables and some ‘lent’ vases. He even got this Persian rug from somewhere definitely not Persia.
Eventually Rod and some others got the shell of a car from somewhere and it turned up half buried in the sand in The Pit so there was a real roof over their heads. They whacked in an armchair and a sofa and a coffee table and lived in that car. It even had a loose steering wheel so they could ‘drive’ it when they were wasted. Couple of Rod’s mates even lived in that car for a while, coming up to Shagrila to use the shower and give a surf report. Cept now it was called Shaga due to some more letters gone missing eh.
Flat.
Loads of talk in The Pit. Too much for you. Mostly rubbish, their dreams of The Life. The Life was this mythic world where you could surf as much as you want, every day, any day, go anywhere it was good. Big swells coming into Hawaii? You hopped in a jet plane. Not that anyone wanted to go to Hawaii, or even New South Wales. They just wanted to be able to surf Snapper and Greenmount and Kirra every day till the day they died and not be tied down when the waves was good. Apparently there was some guys somewhere, America or Hawaii or something, who had The Life—made a living from surfing in comps and selling and shaping boards and maybe giving surf lessons and still surfed whenever they wanted. You never seen them and thought The Life was a bit of a hoax. Surfers took themself too serious, you knew that for sure, surfers took themself so serious they ended up not talking to each other for years cos of one wave, surfers could freeze a bloke out cos he was wearing a panel of colour on his wetsuit or if his board was three inches too long or too wide, surfers could stand on a beach and burst into tears cos they arrived an hour too late and now the wind and tide had went screwy on them, surfers regretted too much, they always should of been here an hour ago.
You knew all this cos it was all you.
But yeah, still flat.
Out of desperation, Rod made a skateboard. Keith kids couldn’t afford one so he cut a piece of wood from the rat cellar into the shape of a mini-board, then swiped a single rollerskate from the school gym. Hacksawed the rollerskate in half, screwed one wheel under the front of the board, other under the back.
Hey presto, skateboarding.
Rod was pretty good at it, haring off down big hill streets off Point Danger into Rainbow Bay, wiped out, got up smiling. Rod never saw no danger in nothing. That was his big problem. You saw danger in everything that wasn’t water. That was yours.
•
He found an empty swimming pool in some under-construction house at Tweed, and experimented with drops off the edge into the bowl.
Dennis, never no good at it. Only time he stayed on the board was when him and Rod did some crabbing, sitting both ends legs locked together. Rod controlled that, and Dennis dug it. But once he got on the skateboard on his own, Dennis kept trying miracle moves and getting horrendously skin-sheeted by pebblecrete.
No good out of the water, Rod laughed.
You just needed waves.
You didn’t notice the birds or the dope till they were already there. They arrived with the Big Flat. The late nights when Rod and his mates had finished gasbagging in The Pit or working on the boards in the rat cellar and went upstairs to party, when you scuttled downstairs to do your all-nighters on new shapes, there was something going on upstairs, you knew that from the OP Frigate Rum and the music, the Hendrix and the Cream and the The Doors, but you shut it all out, you was thinking shapes and waves, shapes and waves.
It been going on for a while when you noticed.
It was dug in.
Rod had a new world going on up there.
This one night, you only had one board to work on and you sanded it down so thin it had wore through and broke on the sawhorse. Must of been round midnight you went upstairs. You checked on Basil. Asleep, snoring, big lipstick out, dreaming about rooting grey old beagles. Rod in the sleepout making a din with his mates.
You went out there and could hardly see them for the clouds. Your nose was numbed-out with resin and glass but you could smell this smell, clouds of smell like earth, sweet planet earth.
You didn’t say nothing. Rod had four or five of his mates, four or five birds too. Lying round the floor on blankets, scattered like a strong wind come in and blew them off the furniture. Like rubbish.
Rod croaking: What’s up, bro?
His eyes them red beads.
You didn’t like that word. Bro.
You were peed off about the board you’d sanded through. You didn’t know what to do with all this crew lying round with red eyes and lazy smiles smiling up at you.
There was this bird and she passed you a ciggie.
You knew what birds were: ones that come up to you and said they liked you and ran off giggling, like they done it for a dare to set you up and laugh at you. That was birds.
You knew what the ciggie was.
The smell.
You grunted something and sat down on the floor. You took a drag.
Oh far out, you heard Rod say. There was this bird with her arm round your shoulder.
The despair and disappointment in Rod’s voice, first you thought you’d taken some of his smoke or moved in on one of his birds, but it was different this look in his eye, like he’d had a flash and seen the whole future rolled out in front of him, and realised it was too late to stop, the point of no return just been passed.
The point of no return.
The despair and disappointment.
His despair: he’d of kept you hidden under the house shaping your board till the end of time. His disappointment: with himself,
for letting it into the house.
They tried to get you to talk, but you wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
Birds, all over you by then. Distracting you from the waves. You figured out they weren’t taking the mickey out of you anymore. They were serious about you. Running their hands through your hair.
That Big Flat summer you shaved all your hair off, they seemed to dig it so much. You figured if you had no hair then birds wouldn’t come after you.
Didn’t make no difference.
They were there, they were everywhere, they wouldn’t leave you alone. Rod would interpret them for you. He’d say, Birds they’re just like blokes, just like you want to surf the most challenging and enjoyable wave they want to go off with the most challenging and enjoyable bloke. Which is you, ya dipstick, he added, not holding down his despair and disappointment.
But I’m not challenging. I never say no.
Yeah, Rod said. But ya never say yes either. Ya never say nothin eh.
And I’m not enjoyable, you said. You didn’t want to add anything to that, any explanation.
Yeah, Rod said again. But birds don’t know that do they.
His despair and disappointment. You didn’t get that. Plenty of girls dug Rod and he always had a few on the go. But he seemed to think you were always getting a better end of the deal. Like you didn’t have to try hard enough. Like you were too much of a legend and a Messiah and too good-looking and it didn’t matter how many chicks Rod had on the go, it still wouldn’t be enough to throw in and bury over the top of you.
Yourself, you couldn’t see what the girls saw in you. Not that you were rude or mean or slapped them or nothing. You just didn’t offer a lot. You never went up to a girl and made nice conversation and asked her out. Wouldn’t of known how to. Couldn’t see the point. Probably would of made a goose of yourself. So why do it? There was plenty of birds rock up at the Queenslander all night, smoking pot, willing and able, slim girls in bikinis and wraparound sarongs, girls with long straight hair and sunburnt noses and tan shoulders, just nice kids looking for fun.
They dug Basil so that gave you something to talk about. You kept saying rubbish like, If you really knew this dog you wouldn’t dig him so much. Like you were talking about yourself.